Title Insurers Continue to Trim Payroll in October
November 10, 2009
Title insurance underwriters continued to slash payrolls during October, according to stats released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
Over the past year, title insurers’ workforce has plummeted 13 percent to 67,500 jobs. Health insurers were the only sector seeing year-to-year job growth, according to September 2009 data. Health insurer payrolls rose 2.3 percent to 461,400.
Overall, the U.S. insurance industry lost 3,400 jobs in October, which is the 12th consecutive month of losses, according to seasonally adjusted data.
Last month, industry payrolls were 2.244 million, down from a seasonally adjusted 2.247 million in September. The September data was revised downward from the 2.249 million jobs reported last month, changing September's job losses to 3,000. In the past year, the industry has lost 67,100 jobs, a drop of 2.9 percent, compared with a 4 percent fall for nonfarm payrolls, according to current BLS data.
In terms of average weekly earnings for non-supervisory positions, those numbers also fell in three categories during the same timeframe. Title insurance employees' earnings dropped 2.3 percent to $823.15. Life insurance employees saw the largest rise in earnings — 5.7 percent to $989.23.
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